Civilization and Beyond by Scott Nearing
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Scott Nearing >> Civilization and Beyond
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When the first war against Carthage was launched in 265 B.C., Carthage
was at the height of her power. Situated on the North African Coast
almost directly across the Mediterranean from Italy, the Carthaginians
were in effective control of the western Mediterranean. Carthage was
firmly entrenched in Spain. It was trading extensively with the British
Isles. Fleets of Carthaginian war ships patrolled the Mediterranean
guarding against piracy and economic or political interference by
rivals.
Roman political and business leaders, inexperienced in international
political dealings and the promotion of international trade, found their
further expansion to the west blocked by Carthaginian political,
economic and military installations. The result of the confrontation was
a series of three wars that began in 265 B.C., and ended in 146. During
these 119 years an established power, Carthage, struggled to preserve
its position against aggressive Roman efforts to take control of the
West Mediterranean basin. The Carthaginians, under the able generalship
of Hannibal, mobilized a military force (including elephants), marched
from Spain over the Alpine passes into Italy reaching the gates of Rome.
Romans countered with the slogan: "Carthage must be destroyed!" When the
third Punic war ended in 146 B.C., with the defeat of the Carthaginian
military forces, the city of Carthage was leveled.
The defeat of Carthage gave the Romans control of the western
Mediterranean. During the same period Roman interests were pushing into
East Europe and Western Asia. In 214 B.C., Philip of Macedon had made an
alliance with Hannibal, directed against Rome. Consequently, three wars
between Rome and Macedonia followed, the third ending in 168 B.C., with
the defeat of the Macedonians and their subordination to Roman authority
in the form of a Roman governor.
When opposition to Roman influence developed in Greece in 148 B.C., a
commission of ten was appointed by the Roman Senate to settle affairs in
the Greek peninsula. The city of Corinth was burned to the ground and
its lands were confiscated. Thebes and Chalcis were also destroyed. The
walls of all towns which had shared in the revolt against Rome were
pulled down. All confederations between Greek cities were dissolved.
Disarmament, isolation and Roman taxation were imposed on the Greek
cities and the oversight of affairs was assigned to the Roman governor
of neighboring Macedonia.
Successful wars against Syria and Egypt extended Roman control over
additional territory in West Asia and North Africa. A map of Italy at
the time of the Roman Federation in 268 B.C. shows Rome as the most
powerful among two score minor associates in the federation. A map of
the Roman Empire at the death of Augustus in 14 A.D. shows a Roman
Empire extending from the Atlantic seaboard on the west to Central
Europe on the north, the Black Sea on the east and a generous strip of
Africa on the south.
Within three centuries Rome had expanded from its position as a minor
state in Italy to the effective control of those portions of three
continents which bordered the Mediterranean. Conquests during the
following century further extended the Roman frontiers.
Under the Caesars Rome was a society in the throes of political
transition. Roman Emperors, backed and frequently selected by the
military, were exercising despotic power. They still paid lip service to
the Constitution, an instrument that had relevance during the life of
the defunct Republic. In the era of the Caesars the law slumbered and
might ruled. The turbulent masses were fed and housed by the Roman
Oligarchy to which the Emperors were ultimately responsible. The far
flung territories conquered by military power and held by military
occupation were subject to the authority of the same Roman Oligarchy.
Behind the shams, frauds and tyrannies of a political dictatorship
paying lip service to the corpse of a defunct Republic lay the stark
realities of a bankrupt economy. Throughout the era of the Caesars the
Roman Empire continued to expand geographically. It also came into
contact and conflict with peoples so remote from Italy that for them
Rome was only a name for tyranny, extortion and exploitation. Julius
Caesar and his immediate successors penetrated these remote territories,
subjugating them, levying tribute, appointing governors and other
officials, policing them, pretending to rule over them. To do this
soldiers were marching on foot into regions that lay thousands of miles
from the mother city. To be sure, they marched over Roman roads and
bridges so well constructed that some of them are still being used at
the present day.
But the excellence of Roman engineering could not match up to the
implacable limitations of time and distance. Nor could they overlook the
need for building the physical structure of Roman economy as they
advanced into enemy territory. Equally decisive were the political
consequences of the property confiscation and forced labor required to
establish and maintain Roman power and enrich greedy Roman officials and
their lackeys and overseers.
Rising overhead costs, with no corresponding growth of income, an empty
treasury in Rome, and a persistent policy of fleecing the provinces to
pay for the normal costs of bureaucracy, plus its extravagances and
excesses, could lead to only one possible outcome. Higher taxes and more
ruinous levies in the newly conquered provinces could not fill the
insatiable maw of deficit spending.
Inflation was the immediate result, accompanied and followed by the
debasement of currency and new expropriations of private property.
Government expenses consistently exceeded income. The situation was
aggravated by the growth of parasitic elements which persistently
produced little or nothing and as persistently multiplied their luxuries
and extravagances. The parasites grew richer. The impoverished masses
suffered the normal deprivations of poverty plus the weight of steadily
rising over-head costs. As Roman authority extended farther from its
center, the chasm between its income and its out-go widened.
Slave labor aggravated the situation. There was a time when Roman
farmers and craftsmen did their own work. That time ended with the
enslavement of war captives who swamped the labor market. Like any
parasitic growth, slavery and forced labor destroyed the fabric of a
largely self-contained economy based on peasant proprietorship.
Roman economy was honey-combed with problems created by deficit
spending, currency devaluation and exploitation. At its base was a
foot-loose urban proletariat made up largely of refugees from a
countryside given over increasingly to the employment of military
captives as slave labor. The city masses at the outset were extensively
unemployed. Increasingly they became unemployable, parasitic, restless,
demanding.
At the outset the slave revolts were local and occasional. As the slaves
grew more numerous unrest spread and hardened into organized resistance.
Spartacus, a slave, led a revolt which mobilized armies, defeated the
Roman legions in a series of battles and ended only with the death of
Spartacus and the dispersal of his forces.
Local and provincial affairs under the Roman Empire were administered by
a self-seeking corrupt bureaucracy.
Expansion by means of military conquest increased the influence of the
military at the expense of the civilian administrators. The consequent
burdens of militarism reached from the bottom to the top of Roman
society. Eventually, under the Caesars, the military selected emperors
from among the rivals for the purple of imperial authority, and used the
legions under their command to protect and promote their own political
fortunes, thus maintaining a form of latent and frequently open civil
war.
Colonial unrest and provincial self-seeking were promoted by
conspiracies among Rome's less dependable allies.
Wars of rivalry between Roman candidates for top preferment shifted the
power-balance out of civilian hands into the grip of the military. Step
by step and stage by stage the Roman Empire became a warfare state
maintained at home and abroad by the intervention of the military. Wars
of rivalry at home in Rome were paralleled by wars of rivalry abroad.
During the Era of the Caesars Rome became the Eurasian-African honey
pot. Wealth centered there. Authority was enthroned there. Power was
generated there. Throughout the sphere of Roman political influence, of
trade and travel, the central position of Rome was recognized and
acknowledged. Not only knowledge and authority, but folklore mushroomed,
with Rome as its central theme. Asian nomads, searching for grass, Asian
potentates seeking new worlds to conquer and plunder, heard of Rome and
finally went there. All roads led to Rome. Thousands of miles of stone
roads were built as binding forces to hold the Empire together and
defend it against all possible enemies. It was along these roads that
the legions marched as they pushed back potential invaders and extended
the frontiers. It was these same roads and bridges that made easy and
sure the advance of the Asian hordes that would one day occupy and loot
the home city. Roads and bridges enabled Roman authority to maintain and
extend itself. The same roads and bridges provided a freeway that led
into the citadel of Roman power.
Under the Caesars the Roman Empire achieved its greatest geographical
extent and exercised its widest cultural influence. The city of Rome was
the capital of the western world. There was one state, one law, one
economy, one official language, one military authority.
Despite its apparent massiveness, Roman civilization was not a monolith.
Rather it was a conglomerate, consisting of many parts held together by
connecting social tissues which Rome and Italy alone supplied. In the
first instance there was a division into provinces, colonies and newly
acquired territories. The provinces, under their Roman appointed
governors, enjoyed a large measure of economic and cultural
self-determination within the Roman Empire. Beyond the Roman Empire lay
territories and peoples associated with Rome by treaties, bound to Rome
by trade and travel, in some cases paying tribute to Rome, but enjoying
sufficient autonomy as peoples, nations and empires maneuvering for
position and advantage, frequently allying themselves with non-Roman
areas and occasionally conspiring to by-pass Roman authority and even to
challenge Roman supremacy.
This political diversity along the defense perimeter of the Roman Empire
existed in a chaos ranging from questioned authority to open defiance
and military challenges to Rome and the threat of Romanization. Along
this defense perimeter were stationed the legions that guarded the
frontiers. Across it moved trade, travel, incursions, invasions and
periodic reprisals as a result of which the more turbulent neighbors
were brought within the sphere of Rome's influence or, in cases of
extreme dissidence and resistance, were depopulated, colonized and added
to the Roman conglomerate.
It goes without saying that the influence of Roman culture extended far
beyond the Roman defense perimeter, reaching peoples, nations and
empires to which Rome was little more than a name. The no-man's land
between what-was and what-was-not Rome not only existed in a state of
perpetual uncertainty, but provided a battle field for the smuggling,
brigandage, the periodic border clashes, the migrations, incursions,
invasions and punitive expeditions that are the characteristic features
of every ill-defined political boundary.
Roman civilization under the Caesars was a centralized absolutism with a
large measure of peripheral deviation and autonomy. It was directed by a
central oligarchy and patrolled, defended and extended by a military
force unified in theory but in practice grouped around the outstanding
personalities and subjected to the vagaries and upsets always associated
with power politics in the hands of military backed political despots.
Roman civilization, like all social organisms, came into being, moved
toward maturity, reached a plateau of fulfillment from which it
declined, broke up and eventually disappeared into the interregnum known
as the Dark Ages. The entire episode occupied a dozen centuries. Its
beginnings were unimpressively local. At the height of its wealth, power
and cultural influence it bestrode the Eurasian-African triangle. Its
decline and disappearance were no less spectacular than its meteoric
rise to fame and fortune.
I would like to summarize the Roman experiment and some of its lessons
by listing and commenting briefly on the forces that built up Roman
civilization and those forces which resulted in its decline and
dissolution.
Primary up-building forces in the Roman experiment:
1. Establishing the city of Rome as a stable, defensible center
of merchandising and commerce, transport, finance, population,
wealth and power with a hinterland of associates
and dependencies. As it turns out, the city of Rome has
outlived both the Roman Empire and Roman Civilization.
2. Steadfast dedication to Roman interests first, by all necessary
means and despite costs which at the time seemed to
be excessive.
3. A recognition of that which is possible, especially in political
relationships. The acceptance with good grace of a
half-loaf where no more was available.
4. Consistent, persistent aggression and expansion where such
policies were beneficial to Rome, with little or no regard
for their effects on Roman associates, allies, friends or
enemies. Studied ruthlessness.
5. Rewarding Rome's friends, allies and associates with economic,
political and cultural advantages. Implacably punishing
and where necessary exterminating Rome's persistent
enemies.
6. Wide tolerance of local cultural variation in matters that
did not conflict with the major principles and practices of
Rome's central authority.
7. Taking defeats in their stride, paying the price, and recovering
lost momentum. Again advancing along avenues
which led to Roman success and aggrandizement.
8. Indomitable persistence in the pursuit of major objectives.
9. After the reigns of Julius Caesar and Augustus, concentrating
power in a single person and his chosen brain trust,
using that power to further aggrandize the Roman Empire
and Roman Civilization.
This category is not complete. It aims to answer the basic question: In
a situation where a thousand contestants entered the knock-down and
drag-out struggle, first for survival and then for supremacy, what
qualities or qualifications enabled Romans to win the laurel crown of
victory?
Paralleling the up-building forces that established Roman supremacy were
counter-forces which undermined and eventually destroyed the Roman
Empire and Roman civilization:
1. The growth of city life at the expense of rural existence.
At the outset of its life cycle, Rome was essentially rural.
At the end of the cycle Roman culture was turning its
back upon ruralism and moving into a culture that was
to be chiefly urban during an entire millennium. In that
millennium Rome, her associates and dependencies, experimented
with a culture that was essentially urban, but
encircled, dependent and eventually replaced by a culture
that was essentially rural.
2. During the millennium between 600 B.C. and 500 A.D.
the Romans and their associates succeeded in bringing
large parts of Europe, Asia and Africa under their control,
but the control was so rigid and temporary that tribalism
and local nationalisms broke loose from the fetters of central
authority and coercive integration, shattering the
structure of Roman civilization and its structural core--the
Roman Empire. Instead of resulting in closer cooperation,
the strategy and tactics of the Roman builders and
organizers led to contradictions, bitter feuds, civil strife,
independence movements which combined with expansionist
diplomacy and periodic wars to discourage, frustrate
and eventually to eliminate peace, order and planned
progress.
2. The spread of chattel slavery had a profound effect upon
the texture of Roman life. At the outset Roman family
farms housed the bulk of the population. During the cycle
of Roman civilization unnumbered millions of captives
were seized in the course of military operations and reduced
to slavery. By the end of the Roman cycle the
work-load of agriculture, commerce, industry, mining,
transport, and the domestic life of the well-to-do was
carried by slaves. Basically, therefore, the Roman world
was divided first into Romans and non-Romans and second
into masters and slaves, with a third category which consisted
of an immense bureaucracy (including the military),
a professional and technological group and a heavy burden
of persistent parasitism.
4. Growth of the abyss that separated wealth and the
wealthy from mass poverty in the cities and the countryside.
The abyss was widened and deepened by the presence
of slavery. More extensive and more frequent foreign
conquests added to the volume of slave labor in a market
already glutted and reduced the price of slaves. Against
this super-abundant cheap slave labor, free labor could
compete only by reducing its standard of living and thus
deepening the abyss of poverty. At the other end of the
social arc, the rich were able to surround themselves with
multitudes of slaves who provided the energy needed to
carry on the complex life of Roman civilization. As the
Roman world expanded, the abyss widened, deepened
and became all but impassable. It was from such lower
depths that Spartacus and other leaders of rebellious slaves
drew sufficient manpower to challenge and for a time
even defeat the full military power of Rome.
5. Built into the structure of Roman civilization was the
potential of civil war. The contradictions of mass slavery
and poverty side by side with boundless leisure and
abundance was only one side of the picture. Each of the
more distant provinces became a possible base from which
ambitious governors or generals could wage wars of independent
conquest at the expense of Roman authority. Each
newly subjugated people, smarting under defeat and the
heavy hand which Rome laid on its dissidents and opponents,
became a potential center for disaffection, conspiracy
and rebellion against Roman authority.
6. Conflicts over power succession, in the provinces, and
more significantly in the mother city, added another
aspect to the many sided pressures. As there was no legal
means of determining the succession, the end of each
imperial reign offered the probability of military intervention.
7. Deification of emperors, during the era of the Caesars,
led to the denigration and degradation of the common
man. The fact that the common men of Rome were more
and more likely to be poor slaves furthered the process
and deepened the abyss between the haves and have-nots.
8. Among the forces of disintegration operating in Rome
none was more potent and more decisive than the numerical
growth of the military and the increasing probability
that any one of the growing contradictions and conflicts
would lead to intervention by the military. Roman emperors
were dictators and their retention of authority
was increasingly decided by the legions which were
willing and able to fight for the perpetuation and extension
of their authority.
9. The extensive, complicated, elaborate structure of Roman
civilization involved a persistent and implacable rise of
overhead costs of food and raw materials, of production,
of transportation, of the bureaucracy, including the military.
The area of Roman civilization increased arithmetically.
Overhead costs rose geometrically. They were
expressed in an empty treasury, rising taxes, inflation,
expropriation, the degradation of the currency.
10. Side by side with the rise in overhead costs went the
increase of parasitism among the rich and among the poor.
Something-for-nothing was the order of the day. Speculation
was rampant. Gambling was universal. Instead of
living by production of goods and services, Romans let
the slaves do their work and lived by their wits.
11. From top to bottom of Roman society negative forces
replaced positive forces. Self directed labor gave place to
slavery; participation in productive activity yielded to
parasitism; productivity was subordinated to destructivity;
the spirit of independence was replaced by the acceptance
of increasing arbitrary individual authority.
12. Roman society constantly faced and consistently failed
to solve the contradiction between centralism and local
interests and local rights. This contradiction increased
with increasing size, diversity and complexity.
13. Psychological forces played a part in the breakdown and
break-up of Roman civilization. People lost faith and hope.
They became disillusioned and cynical. They forgot the
common good and devoted themselves to the gratification
of body hungers. They turned from proud service of
fatherland to the pursuit of pleasure for pleasure's sake.
Romans lost freshness and vigor. Creativeness had never
been as highly regarded among the Romans as it was
among the Greeks. Life was lived closer to the surface. It
was confined more and more to the present. Growth in
the volume of Roman life sapped its vitality so that there
was less surplus for experiment and innovation as more
and more of the social income was devoted to meeting
overhead costs.
Moralists have insisted that the decline and dissolution of Roman
civilization resulted from the abandonment of moral standards.
Undoubtedly this was true. The upstanding womanhood and manhood of early
Rome was replaced by a wealth-seeking, pleasure-loving, parasitically
inclined population. But these features of Roman life under the empire
and during the period of Roman decline were the outcome of political,
economic and social forces that have characterized one civilization
after another. Instead of insisting that Rome declined and fell because
it was immoral, it would be far more accurate to insist that Rome
declined and fell because the objectives which it sought, the means it
employed and the civilized institutions which it developed contained
within themselves oppositions and contradictions which led to decline
and dissolution. Rome declined and fell because the ideas, institutions
and practices upon which it depended--the ideas, institutions and
practices of civilization--could lead to no other outcome.
CHAPTER THREE
THE ORIGINS OF WESTERN CIVILIZATIONS
An experiment with civilization presently spans the planet Earth. It is
called "modern," "contemporary" or "western civilization." Its
artifacts, institutions and practices predominate in Europe, North
America and Australasia. They play a prominent role in the lives of
Asians, South Americans and Africans.
Two thousand years ago a long established Egyptian civilization was
passing into the shadows. Civilizations in China and India were
developing. Roman civilization was approaching the zenith of its
ascendancy.
A thousand years ago Roman civilization, like that of Egypt, was a
memory; Chinese and Indian civilizations were holding their own, while
the followers of Islam were reaching out into Central Asia, North Africa
and Eastern Europe.
In east central Europe and around the Mediterranean the beginnings of
western civilization had made their appearance and were expanding their
control along the Eurasian trade routes and beginning to penetrate
western and northern Europe. The Crusades had introduced Asian culture
traits into the European backwoods. Hardy European and Asian mariners
were penetrating the Americas. Dark ages of ignorance and superstition
which had held sway in Europe for centuries were coming to an end.
Western civilization was beginning to draw the breath of a new life.
The vast structure of Roman civilization had split West from East. The
Eastern Empire retained its form and continued its culture for centuries
after its break with the West. Meanwhile the West fragmented into
smaller and smaller units, increasingly self-contained and increasingly
isolated. Cities raised and manned their own walls. The countryside
broke up into smaller and smaller divisions over which the Holy Roman
Empire exercised little more than a shadowy authority. Each landed
estate had its stronghold or castle. Each locality looked after its own
interests. The massive Roman Universal State, stretching for centuries
across parts of three continents, had broken up into a multitude of tiny
semi-sovereign, semi-independent fragments. Some of the fragments as
leagues, alliances and coalitions were reaching nationhood.
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